My point is spice jet has been able to increase the yield which means that it has been able to increase the fare…at the same time load factor is also better…however as pointed out this may be due to regular incr in the capacity of indigo…but indigo is certainly trying to play the cheapest flight available and did not pass the incr in crude cos to pax during previous year…

The fact that spice jet has done that may give indigo a room for increasing its price…lets see…

Yield is not connected 1-1 to fares. You can have lower fares but higher yields if you fill up more seats which SpiceJet does.

Their load maybe higher because of them flying smaller aircraft (the Bombardiers). So flying a 80 passenger from Mumbai to Goa may fill up all but a 180 seat aircraft may only fill up 162 seats (90%).

To early to comment on costs. Spicejet has just come out operational mismanagement. By next year with newer jets coming in if costs do not reduce then it can be considered a management inefficiency. Besides Indigo flies a single aircraft (single contract) unlike spicejet which flies aircraft from two different manufacturers which pushes up maintenance costs.

It was a piece of news that sent the spirits of the budget traveller soaring. In May this year, Icelandic carrier WoW Air announced the launch of long-haul low-cost (LHLC) services from New Delhi to US, at just Rs 13,499 for a one-way journey.

Indigo inducted 4 more A320 Neo. With such a high traffic growth,jammed airports,manufacturer strugelling with new supply of planes, consolidation of narrow body plane manufacturers worldwide under Boeing and Airbus,Suresh Prabhu at helm, Etihad in soup, booming domestic tourism industry…Indian aviation story is unique and no longer commodity…may be near term hardship due to crude making them a compelling story…

Somewhere in this topic, I read their CASK (Cost per available km) is about Rs 3.So I am not able to relate this cost to my regular route, Delhi - Bangalore which is approx. 1700 km (air distance calculated using Vincenty’s formula). One can easily find the flight on this route in less than Rs 4000 even for last minute bookings.

They obviously make huge money on F&B, cancellation fees, seat fees (which is not refundable even on a cancellable fare), leasing space for advertisements, also some seats get sold at much higher price and some at very low price (every time you login you will get different quote from them). Overall the realisation per passenger is much higher. Too many hidden costs make the quoted price look much attractive then it actually is.